The three women combed through their pink score sheets like coaches rating athletes.

The best of Glendale’s young musicians put their talents on the line this week in auditions for the Glendale Youth Orchestra.

The new symphonic group is being formed by the area’s private music teachers, educators and community arts backers to offer junior high school students an intense ensemble experience.

Those selected will pay tuition of $100 and rehearse two hours every Monday night beginning next week. They’ll be ready for their first concert in December.

Over the four days of auditions, about 70 children showed up. They came, one at a time, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Foothill Boulevard. There, each played 10 minutes, alone, in a small room before a panel of three women and several rows of empty chairs.

On the panel Saturday were Dana Freeman, a music teacher; Pat Pinkston, orchestra coordinator for the Glendale schools, and Lois Johnson, the young music director of the San Fernando Valley Symphony. Johnson was selected to lead the Youth Orchestra last spring after proving herself fit for the duty by conducting a junior high school orchestra.

Johnson, who has two infants of her own, took the lead in dealing with the children. She gave crisp, detailed instructions in a soothing junior high school teacher’s voice.

“Do you have a scale prepared?” she asked a seventh-grader named Robbie, a towheaded boy in green and white shorts and a turquoise T-shirt who stood frozen in apparent panic.

“Yes,” said Robbie.

“Which one?” she asked.

“G,” he said.

“The G Major? Good.”

Robbie went up the scale slowly and precisely, then back down.

“I like to hear scales like that,” Johnson said. “OK, what piece do you have?”

Robbie said he had “Bouree,” a Baroque piece. “ ‘Bouree,’ can you play it backward?” Johnson asked in jest.

Robbie stared back with giant eyes, in silence.

“OK, you can start any time you want, Robbie,” Johnson said.

Robbie played very carefully and accurately. The judges wrote down scores on pink sheets of paper.

“Very good,” Johnson said. She walked up and handed him a tune to sight-read.

“Figure out the rhythms, if they’re long or short,” Johnson said. “When you’re ready, you can start.”

Robbie stared at the sheet for about a minute.

“Come on, we haven’t got all day,” Freeman, who was Robbie’s teacher, prodded gently.

Robbie played a series of notes, one at a time.

“Do you recognize that tune?” Pinkston asked.

Robbie shook his head.

“Play it again faster,” Johnson instructed.

Played faster, it sounded a lot like “Up on a Rooftop.”

Next came Steven, a serious lad who said he practiced half an hour a day, and Deborah, an easygoing girl who wore a blue skirt and pressed white blouse and said she also plays the rover position in softball. Each played “Humoresque” on the cello and did quite well.

Johnson thought Deborah did too well, in fact, when given a Vivaldi piece to sight-read. She admitted shyly that she already knew the music from class.

After every few students, the three women combed through their pink score sheets like coaches rating athletes. In their imaginations, they juggled the musicians from position to position on the stage, weighing their physical and psychological traits.

“When you said Brian doesn’t play any better in tune than that, did you know” his violin was out of tune? Johnson asked Pinkston.

“Bless his heart, he’s such a nice young man,” Pinkston said. “But something happens with his fingers, and I’ve watched it for years.”

Pinkston liked Mark, but Johnson thought him weak on intonation.

“He played a piece where he didn’t have any vibrato, and he does have a nice vibrato,” Pinkston said.

“I think Brian on the outside and Mark on the inside,” Johnson said. “Brian just seemed a lot . . .”

“He seemed older,” Pinkston volunteered.

Johnson tentatively assessed the cello lineup.

“I have it as Steven, Celia, Brian--I’m not sure, Mark or Rose--and then Brandon, and then Rickie.

“They’ve been competing for years, those boys,” Pinkston commented. “So, let’s put a girl between them.”

Robbie made the cut in the violin section, even though he struck the judges as being a little intimidated.

His teacher Freeman said he’d be more comfortable in a group.

“That’s good to know,” Johnson said. “I was worried that Robbie might not be ready. But if you think he’d do well in the group, he’s a little doll. And he was good.”

By the end of the day, the strings and woodwinds looked in pretty good shape. But for some reason, the brass section wasn’t coming together. Only one trumpet player had auditioned.

Sometimes Johnson pumped the students for names of other brass players. Invariably, though, they could remember the names of dead composers better than the kids who played trumpet in the school orchestra last spring.

So, this week, Johnson is on the phone a lot, getting out the word:

If you play brass, the Glendale Youth Orchestra needs you.